January 28, 2002
i was able to watch black hawk down on saturday. it was a
pretty good movie, especially since i was a guy and i like to watch
fighting, which pretty much the entire movie was. the first impression i
had was that those soldiers were put in a ridiculous situation that was
presented better in the book version than the movie. the movie did not
capture the amount of soldiers injured throughout the day. the movie also
did not show the high level of tension between the delta soldiers and the
rangers. it showed them bickering a little, but that was it. one thing i
do realize from this movie, and the book, is the level of commitment that
these soldiers have to each other. i read this in a review, and i wholly
agree with it. the movie does a good job of showing the cameraderie
between the men, which is all that this fight turned out to be (in the
view of the director). the only reason why men kept going back into
mogadishu was to retrieve stranded men. even after achieving their goal of
capturing aidid's men, the soldiers went to retrieve the crashed black
hawk pilots, not knowing if they were alive or dead. many risked
their lives for a few, and did so for the most part without hesitation.
they gave their lives to each other without a second thought. it seemed
like second nature. i guess they were trained well. they came to depend
on each other, and tried as best as they could to uphold the motto "leave
no man behind." an admirable saying, and punctuating the team effort that
the army, and in this particular case, the rangers and delta force lived
and died by. a great moral nonfiction, i guess, that could be applied to
every man in every situation. but i guess it's just not as pressing when
bullets arent flying by us.
i wonder how it is that these soldiers can be motivated to go out there
and kill or be killed. is patriotism really that imbedded within them? do
they really buy into the propaganda so wholeheartedly? i guess they do so
some degree, but i wonder how many of them really believe it all the time.
because to die for a cause is a big deal, and for one as impersonal as
patriotism is, i dont know, weird. im sure out on the battlefield it
becomes way more personal, but yeah, at home i dont think so. there must
be other reasons...i guess i'll never know till i join personally, or
find out from someone who is in the military.
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